It’s all quite remarkable—a formerly pristine hamlet in western Wyoming suffers ozone pollution levels higher than Los Angeles because of nearby natural gas drilling, nuclear power plant waste plunges into the Pacific threatening to wipe out Japan’s fishing industry, BP prepares to resume Gulf Coast drilling less than a year after its oil well blew up with dead porpoises and sea turtles still washing up on area beaches, and the drill, drill, drill folks are back thanks to rising oil prices over the Middle East political contagion.

For more than 40 years, the United States has sidestepped opportunities for conservation and developing new energy technologies simply because big energy businesses (oil companies) and related industries (automobile manufacturers including their labor unions) have lobbied (basically paid off) politicians from both parties to short-circuit new initiatives that might have created world class businesses by now and made us more energy independent. We probably would not have had as much interest in getting caught up either in outrageously costly wars in Iraq or Afghanistan or be involved in propping up failing oil state regimes, the real targets of insidious groups like Al Qaeda.

Let’s also note that spiking oil prices have helped generate all our recessions since the early 1970s including lending a supporting role in 2008. And now they are rising again to near record levels. If Saudi Arabia collapses all bets are off to continuing economic recovery. Higher oil prices are leading to higher food prices, meanwhile, basically threatening to smother any recent meager gains in hiring and wages. When inflation gets going the usual antidote is higher interest rates, but raising rates now would undermine the fragile recovery too and hit real estate markets especially hard. But we may be headed into this uncomfortable box at a time when the government faces shut down over fears about rising national debt levels.